Ultraviolet (UV) lamps are well-known in the art to cure certain curable compounds such as adhesives and the like. UV spot curing systems are used in various applications including the curing of industrial sealants for potting electronics, bonding plastics in the medical industry and the curing of dental filling materials, disk drive industry amongst other applications. Generally, the presence of air would reduce curing of the adhesive. During photopolymerization, as you radiate UV energy or light, the free radicals that are formed during curing are destroyed by reaction with oxygen from the air. Therefore, it is desired to integrate an inert gas with an UV irradiance onto the adhesive surface during the curing cycle. This integration of the inert gas overcomes oxygen inhibition associated with photopolymerization of acrylate/methacrylate products.
UV curing devices for curing adhesive between two layers of an information carrier, used particularly for disk drive industry, are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,361,846; 6,170,172; 6,148,542 and 6,108,933. The devices described in these patents is a device that cures the adhesive by means of UV radiation in an inert-gas atmosphere. These devices include a curing chamber or enclosure filled with inert gas that isolates the adhesive from the atmospheric oxygen. However, such devices do not have the ability to accurately focus the light to a confined area or location. Also, the reactive material is required to be enclosed in a chamber. Finally, the curing is performed at a low irradiation intensity making the curing process slow and inefficient.
Therefore, a need exists to provide a spot curing system which overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art.